QUESTION: “WHAT IS YOUR PROPOSAL TO INSPIRE AND MOBILIZE PEOPLE AND TO BUILD THE CRITICAL MASS NECESSARY TO TRANSFORM OUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM?”

By David Korten

Imagine a world of healthy happy children, strong families, caring communities, and a vibrant natural environment in which everyone has a meaningful and fulfilling means of livelihood and young people grow up confident in the prospects for their future. An impossible dream? It is within our means.

While he was president, Bill Clinton kept a note taped to his mirror to remind him every morning “It’s the economy, stupid!” Perhaps we should all do the same. It would remind us that the institutions that define the economy effectively determine whether a living wage job will be available to everyone who needs one, whether families can put food on the table without running up credit card and mortgage debt, whether a quality education and health care will be available at an affordable price, and much more.

Economic instability, a grossly unjust distribution of wealth, environmental devastation, and endless wars in distant lands are all symptoms of a failed economic system. Of course, not everyone agrees that it is failing. It works fine from the perspective of Wall Street bankers. They are, however, a tiny minority. It is a devastating failure from the perspective of those who struggle with the realities of an economy that pays substandard wages, keeps jobs scarce, puts education and health care beyond reach, and forces us into perpetual debt slavery to generate hundred million dollar bonuses for Wall Street bankers.

The only legitimate purpose of an economy is to produce the goods and services people need for a full and healthy life. If existing economic institutions fail to fulfill this purpose, it is the democratic right of the people to change them. I’m not talking socialism here. I’m talking real markets and real democracy — the economic alternative both to a capitalist system that subjects people to rule by unaccountable financiers and to a socialist system that subjects them to rule by unaccountable bureaucrats.

It is entirely possible to design economic institutions that value life more than money and distribute power democratically to ordinary people who have a natural concern for the health and vitality of their children, families, community and nature. Although the political barriers are substantial, the basic concepts are simple common sense. You evaluate economic performance by life indicators rather than financial indicators, root the power to create and allocate money in locally accountable financial institutions, and favor public policies that support equitable compensation, community-based cooperative forms of ownership, cost internalization, fair elections, and bio-regional self-reliance.

Declaring our independence from Wall Street to create democratic, market based economies accountable to the people they are intended to serve is a challenge comparable to that faced by the early North American colonists who declared their independence from a powerful king in 1776. The leadership in that early independence movement came from below, not from King George. Likewise the leadership in our contemporary independence movement will come from ordinary people mobilizing from below, not from Wall Street or Wall Street owned politicians.

SVN’s Fall Invitational is from October 21 – 24 at the Ocean Place Resort in Long Branch, New Jersey and is open to senior executives at for-profit and non-profit organizations whose work is aligned with SVN’s mission of creating a just and sustainable economy. Click here to learn more and register now.

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WANT A CHANCE TO WIN A COPY OF DAVID KORTEN’S BOOK AGENDA FOR NEW ECONOMY? ANSWER KORTEN’S QUESTION BELOW IN THE COMMENTS SECTION AND WE’LL SELECT 10 WINNERS!

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123 comments

It is going to be very difficult to find critical mass to try and transform the economic system. The game is stacked in the favor of the rich and financial institutions. I believe that any long lasting transformation will have to come from the grass roots up. That is one of the reasons I was so interested in the Occupy Movement. I believe that in order for the Occupy Movement to transform the economy it will have to engage in the political system an not be an outsider. It will have to run candidates in opposition of the Koch Brothers funded Tea Party members with a political platform and take their platform and positions to the American public. It is a long shot and it has yet to be determined if they would be as corrupted by the system as todays players. The hope for transformation will have many fronts. Overturning Citizens United. True campaign finance reform if not public financing of political campaigns. These will help to take the money out of politics and level the playing field. The citizenry might have to limit the size of the banks by pulling their money out of theose too bigh to fail thereby making them smaller. Reinstituting Glass Steagall.

part two...
The way it has always worked is that if you watch out for my self-serving interest then I will watch out for your, but now, it is some type of legal minimalism...if it is legal then it must be right. How did we get to this place of success being more important than being true and moral. Where is the outrage against such prevailing practices or maybe a better question would be, how do we get people to be morally outraged against such prevailing practices.

Maybe a few bill boards on the interstates would work to reeducate people as that targets the most common denominator which seems to be their tactics as there are a great many people of the poor and working class that are putting fore "not caring statements" and rationalizations thus it is working for those people that believe that success is more important than the truth.

Ethical behavior is based on standards of caring and that is the problem...we teach our kids one set of ethical behaviors at home while at work we use another one. We are all so good at rationalizing why we don't do what we know to be moral? No economic system is going to change our perceptions of reality till our leaders start becoming the role models that put forward truth instead of success at any cost.
So then how can we make it so that truth is more important than success? Is it as simple as demanding that our leaders take an oath that requires them to protect the American spirit (economic choice for all) above their' own success. How do we make it so that all the stakeholders must be taken into consideration before one can make a policy that does harm to others.
Do we education the working and poor class or do we force the middle class toward leadership roles, and not the current one of managing the static quo. Currently it seems that caring for the weak, poor, old, young, etc is under attack as statements such as only the working should be able to draw welfare, SSI, or any other caring considerations has been the forefront of people's rationalizing as they manage the static quo; however, the same people also seem to be positing that what is wrong with our society is that people don't care....go figure.
The way it has always worked is that if you watch out for my self-serving interest then I will watch out for your, but now, it is some type of legal minimalism..